50 sentences - Sherlock and John
by Archerea
Summary: I'm doing it again - 50 sentences, this time for Sherlock Holmes and John Watson of BBC's Sherlock, because I simply adore that show and had to try my hand at a fic for it. Also, rated T for minor suggestive adult themes and a little post-violence, but nothing too bad.


**50 sentences – Sherlock and John**

#01 – Air: Sherlock looks at him with a smile in his eyes and the air leaves his lungs and it feels like living and dying at the same time, and John Watson is quite alright with that.

#02 – Apple: "I don't eat when working on a case" the detective insists, but he indulgently bites into the apple boats placed before him by his concerned flatmate, looking ravenous to a fault.

#03 – Beginning: "Afghanistan or Iraq?" – A question that is the beginning of the end.

#04 – Bugs: John is not amused by the ladybugs crawling around in his bed (even if the tiny creatures are supposedly participants in an important experiment) and asks Sherlock in no uncertain terms to either remove them at one or sleep on the staircase – again.

#05 – Coffee: He doesn't need caffeine, he needs to sleep, but since that last one isn't really an option when living and working with a man such as Sherlock Holmes, he settles for the next best, which in this case is coffee – black, no sugar – from Speedy's.

#06 – Dark: Sherlock is all white skin and purple shirt and blue eyes, but there's something black to him as well, in the shadows when he sees a particularly gruesome murder that affects him more than he lets on, so when at the seldom times John searches for a word to define his friend, he thinks that Sherlock is dark.

#07 – Despair: John is filled with despair as Sherlock once again turns his back on him, effectively shutting out his best friend – his _only_ friend – because he prefers to be alone and because caring isn't an advantage.

#08 – Doors: As he forces open the heavy doors and bursts through them into the large room, a nightmare he didn't even know he was in the midst of is coming true as he sees Sherlock in the other building, too bloody far away, hand with the pill nestled between his fingers raised to his pale trembling lips, John takes aim, because he's very loyal very fast, after all.

#09 – Drink: "And the skull, that _blasted_ skull always staring at me, his experiments, heads in the fridge. I swear, Greg, I'm about to go mental!" he says, pint of beer raised before him, and as he tilts back his head to take a drink, he sees Lestrade smirking at him, 'cause he knows John and knows that he wouldn't have Sherlock any other way.

#10 – Duty: Sherlock is holding the Union Jack-pillow flush against his chest, forehead wrinkled in a solemn frown as he does a mock salute to the noble Britain with the sole purpose of irking Mycroft, "Duty calls, John! For Queen and Country! Why, you ask? Because Big Brother says so, of course!" – the older Holmes doesn't talk to them for a week after that, and John is forever grateful for Sherlock's antiques.

#11 – Earth: One day Sherlock tells John that he is the single thing that keeps him down to Earth when there are no cases to divert his attention and he feels like he is going mad from boredom, and the hesitant yet genuine smile that the detective sends him after this show of sentiment is what finally convinces John that he is well and truly screwed.

#12 – End: All John wants is an evening of peace and quiet and eating risotto left-overs, and so, when he finds his food in the trash having had its place in the fridge stolen by a jar of fingers, John looks at Sherlock – suddenly having gone very white – and hisses, "I'm gonna _end_ you".

#13 – Fall: He loves him so much, so fiercely, that when Sherlock falls in more ways than one, John tumbles right over the edge with him.

#14 – Fire: The shimmering surface of the pool's water casts an eerie reflection onto Jim Moriarty's pale face as he tells Sherlock that he'll burn the heart out of him, but when Sherlock sees the fear in John's tightly knit lips and all the white in his eyes, he decides that he is more than willing to fight fire with fire.

#15 – Flexible: "It hurts, John!" he exclaims in both pain and exasperation, wincing as the doctor pops his shoulder back into its socket and mercilessly tells him that he could just be more flexible and also try not to get into a fight with a former wrestler.

#16 – Flying: Sherlock has taken something seven per cent stronger, and now he's lying on the couch gasping for breath and uttering nonsense – something about flying –, and John turns away with a pained look on his face, not wanting to see his best friend, his only love, looking so pathetic and not wanting to be faced with the numbing fact that there's nothing he can do about it when Sherlock is in the throes of the mind-poisoning drugs.

#17 – Food: The Chinese food should have been thrown out days ago, and Sherlock ought to have listened to John when he pointed this fact out – yet John can't help feeling a little bad as his friend is curled up on the couch, clutching as his middle and moaning because he ate bad noodles.

#18 – Foot: "Leave it be. Please" John says, not entirely managing to conceal the whine in his voice as Sherlock assesses the bleeding cuts on John's left foot from where he stepped in a glass bottle dropped by accident on 221B's kitchen floor – Sherlock is relentless, though, and when he removes the last piece of glass with a pincher, John makes a sigh of relief.

#19 – Grave: He tends to the grave himself – flowers, lights, removing weed from around the stone - because he can't bear to let anyone else do it.

#20 – Green: The ears in the sink have started turning green, and while Sherlock studies them with great fascination and exclaims that they weren't supposed to do that, John leaves the apartment to avoid turning the same colours as the appendages – he doesn't scold Sherlock, though, 'cause the genius looks so ridiculously happy with the whole thing that John can't bring himself to say anything.

#21 – Head: When John once again – this ought to be the tenth time at least – finds a severed head in his kitchen, he can't help the irrational thought that London really must run out of dead people for Sherlock to tamper with soon enough.

#22 – Hollow: And he screams and screams and screams into his pillow when he's finally alone after the funeral, yells and cries and _screams_ out everything – _"Sherlock!"_ – He has inside of him until he feels nothing – _Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock Sherlock_ – but hollow.

#23 – Honour: Exhausted and weary after a whole day of meeting with people and speaking on the phone, John sinks onto the couch, choosing to ignore Mycroft's call in which he will surely ask John to stop his madness, to stop trying to defend the honour of a dead man – but if he knew John at all, he would know that he is a soldier and will always fight for what he believes in.

#24 – Hope: A tiny hope flutters in his chest as he sees a tall man with a straight back and dark curls on the street, only to be cruelly clenched again when said man turns around and isn't who he longed for him to be.

#25 – Light: John is his light and his dark, his day and his night, his everything, but when Sherlock means to tell him so he is reduced to a stuttering mess, and when he finally, if a little covertly, succeeds – "I've only got one" – it's already too late.

#26 – Lost: There's no pulse beating steadily beneath his fingertips, no movements, no breath, no nothing, and though John knows perfectly well where he is – St. Bartholomew's, street, scene of death, end of everything – he has never felt more lost.

#27 – Metal: There is a clang of metal around his wrists and he realizes with great fatigue that he has been kidnapped again – stupid Mycroft and his power-complexes, a phone shouldn't be that hard to operate when you're the British government, really.

#28 – New: "Well, this is… New" John says, trying and failing to control the grin spreading across his face as he sees a fuming and blushing and very much ginger ("It's for the Newark-case!") Sherlock standing in the bathroom, and his day is made when the detective hours later comes to him, very humbly asking for help in getting the stuff out of his hair.

#29 – Over: If he had his way he'd never get over him, but there's so much going on – new job, new people, new everything – that he sort of gets pulled along, and though he doesn't forget, he allows the wounds to become scars and the pain to become a dull ache in the back of his mind, and even if he is still falling to pieces every single day, he manages to put himself together.

#30 – Peace: Sherlock looks roughed and worn and broken, but as he embraces John and they sink to the floor right there in the doorway, a heap of limps and "I'm sorry"'s and "You're here", the doctor can feel the tension disappearing from the body in his arms as Sherlock finds the peace that he has been craving for so long.

#31 – Poison: "But you said you'd play Cluedo with me, you promised, I'm soooo bored!" the great big man-child says, to which John rolls his eyes and sternly replies, "I will, but only if you accept the fact that the victim couldn't actually have poisoned themselves" (they don't play more that night and settle for watching Doctor Who instead).

#32 – Pretty: When John replies "very pretty" to Sherlock's inquiry about his new silk shirt, he suddenly finds the amount of disgusting experiments and fruits gone rotten doubled (turns out Sherlock had gone for "handsome").

#33 – Rain: It rains on the day they bury Sherlock at a small private ceremony, and as the body is lowered into the ground, John wishes for the rain – heavy, heavy rain, like the sky is crying big teardrops for the disgraced consulting detective who fell like an angel – to wash it all away.

#34 – Regret: As he examines the familiar-looking but otherwise not at all recognizable white fluid in his glass, John regrets not answering 'no' when Sherlock offered to pick up the milk.

#35 – Rose: Their relationship, companionship, partnership, _whatever_(!) is sort of like a rose – perfect, laughter, always -, but it has thorns as well – "I'll burn you", seven per cent stronger, goodbye, and so John can't decide whether he hates the flower or not.

#36 – Secrets: Slamming the screen of the laptop shut in Sherlock's face, John grabs the device from fingers loosened in shock and says eerily calm, "You've got your secrets, I've got mine" and then kicks his friend across the ankle when he as an explanation says that there's no need for John to be secretive about his porn ("Jam, John, really?").

#37 – Snakes: Deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths, don't panic – is John's mantra to himself as Crazy Bond Villain (he has long since given up on remember the names of their enemies, of which there are many) pushes a button (red, of course), and snakes – living, hissing snakes - start slowly slithering towards them across the floor, tongues dancing, mesmerizing eyes regarding him like he's lunch and teeth dripping a colourless fluid, promising endless hours.

#38 – Snow: Sherlock thinks he might be bleeding as he slips into an alley, moving forward in a frantic run; dizziness, pain in various places, thoughts in his mind palace scattered everywhere like an angry child's Legos – and if those aren't giveaways, the startlingly red trails he leaves in the snow, like flowers blooming in the white, must surely be a tell-tale sign.

#39 – Solid: Tears are spilling and stinging and clouding his vision, but he does nothing to stop them, 'cause his flatmate, his friend, his partner, his _Sherlock_, really, is standing in front of him, bruised and battered, but also solid and safe and home.

#40 – Spring: Turns out the criminal they're looking for suffers from pollen allergy, and as it is the nicest of spring days and they're already in the park, John and Sherlock sit down on a bench to enjoy the gentle sunshine on their faces, not taking notice of the thief who, yelling and cursing and face red and blotched, is dragged into a car by Lestrade and Donovan.

#41 – Stableness: If his psychiatrist questions his stableness in the months after the Fall (in his head it will always be spelled with a capital "F") she doesn't let it on, for which John is thankful – he takes the drugs he is given, though, and asks for more when he runs out.

#42 – Strange: Gregory Lestrade is – as opposed to what the younger Holmes brother might think (have thought) – not stupid; he knows something fishy is going on, something strange about the whole Richard Brooks thing, and therefore he quietly, in the shadows, assists John in slowly but steadily cleaning the name of the shunned consulting detective.

#43 – Summer: "We should go somewhere" Sherlock says to him one afternoon when sitting in the cosy living room of 221B, "Perhaps when summer comes around. Not many cases in the holiday. There are no one to murder when everyone is in places like… Like Greece." – his face is red and he doesn't look up from the file he is reading, but his meaning comes across quite clear, and John is so pleased that he flees to his room, unable to hide the smile his friend's words have called forth.

#44 – Taboo: "You don't talk about that stuff in public!" Lestrade says, looking quite murderous, as he drags an affronted Sherlock and a giggling – giggling! – John into St. Bart, "I don't care about what you do in your spare time! You don't talk about – " and then he laughs as well, not able to hide his amusement, "Did you see Anderson's face?" (they did, and it was funny).

#45 – Ugly: John's voice is shaky and a little bit broken as he whispers against Sherlock's naked shoulder, "let them be, they're ugly, please let them be" – but Sherlock just shakes his head and continues planting gentle touches on John's scars, and he suddenly doesn't care if they're repulsing or not, as long as Sherlock doesn't see them as such.

#46 – War: Walking(running) with Sherlock Holmes makes one see the invisible war raging in the streets of London, and though his better judgement tells him that he should get the hell out ("Enough for a lifetime, far too much"), John can't help but being pulled into the fray ("You're not haunted by the war, Doctor Watson. You miss it"), loving every second of it.

#47 – Water: So thirsty, he's so thirsty, and when he rasps out this fact, head feeling empty and too full at the same time, arms and legs like lead, John is by his side in a matter of minutes pushing a glass of water into his hand and chuckling softly when Sherlock declares that he never again will allow "this stupid vessel" (meaning his body) to attract influenza.

#48 – Welcome: For the first time in three years – three long, long, long years – Sherlock walks into the flat knowing that no matter how long time passes and no matter how much resentment he will be subjected to, John is there to bid him welcome back.

#49 – Winter: "Where are you going?" he asks, sitting up on the couch and looking at John with a frown, which in turn makes John smile – the detective has been a little overprotective since rejoining the land of the living – and lifts the scarf he is wrapping around his neck – "I'm going for a walk, it's winter – ("I know!"), You want to join? ("…Yes.")."

#50 – Worries: Sometimes he worries – worries that he will wake up and that it will all have been a dream, that the nightmare is still a reality, that the fall actually did have a permanent destination -, but when he does so Sherlock looks him straight in the eyes and is so real and so there and so alive, and he stops worrying, if only for a little while.


End file.
